MacOS – How to show if I am the BCC’ed recipient in Mail.app

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I recently received an email from a collaborator in which I was the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy). The original "To:" recipient was another collaborator who has a very similar email address to mine. Because of the similarity in addresses, and because I didn't see anything indicating I was a BCC (even in the detailed header information), I responded back to the original sender and the "To:" recipient pointing out the "mistake."

Obviously this defeated the whole purpose of being BCC'ed by the original sender.

Is there a way in Mail.app to show if I am the BCC of an email? I am not interested in seeing other BCC's on emails I receive. This was on Lion, if that makes any difference.

Best Answer

(Sorry for the lack of screenshots; I'm writing from a Windows machine right now)

Go to Mail > Preferences > Rules

Click "Add Rule"

For Description, enter "BCC" For the conditions, select "Any Recipient" "Does not contain" and enter your address in the third field For action, select "Set Color" "of background" "Purple" (or whatever color you chose) and click OK.

From then on, incoming messages not sent "To:" or "CC:" you will be marked in that color.

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Mail.app Automator/Sript action for suspicious emails

It does not appear that Automator by itself has enough vocabulary to perform this task, but with a little Applescript you can get there.

If you've upgraded to Mavericks you can use a library to add ICU regular expressions to your script, but awk, sed, and Perl give you plenty of parsing power without them.

I run Applescript on my system using FastScripts or Keyboard Maestro but an Automator service should work as well.

Note that this script is not a complete answer to your problem but provides most of the tools you need solve it.

-ccs

try

    set lookUpAgent to "http://www.lookip.net/whois/"

    tell application "Mail"
        set selMsgList to selection
        if selMsgList ≠ {} then
            set selMsg to item 1 of selMsgList
            tell selMsg
                set headerText to all headers
            end tell
        else
            error "No messages were selected!"
        end if
    end tell

    # Parse the header-text to your heart's content.
    # A simple example:
    set parsedText to do shell script "egrep -i ^received: <<< " & quoted form of headerText

    # Let's say the IP address you parse out is:
    set ipAdrs to "17.172.224.47"

    set lookUpUrl to lookUpAgent & ipAdrs

    tell application "Safari"
        activate
        make new document with properties {URL:lookUpUrl}
    end tell

on error e number n
    set e to e & return & return & "Num: " & n
    tell me to set dDlg to display dialog e with title ¬
        "ERROR!" buttons {"Cancel", "Copy", "OK"} default button "OK"
    if button returned of dDlg = "Copy" then set the clipboard to e
end try

Reply from same address as mail was sent to in Mail.app

Apple Mail can only send replies from mail enabled accounts that you have set up in your system. I.e., you may have iCloud account set up in your system, but if you have mail option unchecked in System Preferences -> Internet Accounts -> iCloud, you won't be able to send any mail (including replies) from that iCloud account. One possible workaround is to use 'Reply To' field which you can enable by pressing Alt+Command+R or from Main Menu -> View -> Reply-To Address Field. This will enable your recipients press reply button and send their reply to the address which you will enter into mentioned field. Hope this helps.

Best Answer

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Mail.app Automator/Sript action for suspicious emails

Reply from same address as mail was sent to in Mail.app

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